# 257 – Rockets in the Skies

July 12, 2014

Arrived home in Israel from another trip just in time for Friday evening with the family.

After dinner, up on the roof and playing with the children. We were able to watch the fireworks: Palestinian rockets being intercepted by the Iron Dome protection system. Two at the same time. Sorry, no time for pictures.

Bullets that may surprise you –

• If the world news would headline 700 rockets and not five deaths then perhaps Hamas would surrender. Their success feeds on propaganda at the cost of lives.

• The ‘World’ criticises ‘the settlements’. Yet most of them are legal and moral. What’s really Illegal is the continued Palestinian opposition to the UN two-state resolution. They started several wars over the years, lost them, and then cry to the very organisation which they disrespected in the first place.

• I, too, am from a refugee family. In fact, maybe half of my friends in my life have come from refugee families. Perhaps if I write to the UN, they’ll set up the UNSP organisation, and I’ll be rich and famous. Only difference is, I would not invest in oppression and misery.

• Over 700 rockets fired from Gaza so far and a couple recently from Southern Lebanon. No fatalities yet, thank God. One seriously injured was a handicapped man who couldn’t get out of his car when the alarm went off. His car was blown up.

• Whenever we are warned of incoming attacks, most Israelis are advised/ordered to go for cover. We ave instructions ‘coming out of our ears’. It is not surprising that we have few fatalities, even after over 700 rockets fired.

• Conversely, Hamas orders its people to stay home when attacks are imminent. Israel sends warnings wherever/whenever it can. They telephone homes and say an attack in coming. In most cases, when they suspect/know there may be civilians involved, they fire a dud rocket as an extra warning.

• But these pathetic followers of Hamas obey their leaders, and, in tragic cases, die. ‘We have nowhere to hide’, they claim. No way to protect themselves. HUNDREDS…I repeat: HUNDREDS of tunnels were built to smuggle goods, people, drugs, cash in and out of Gaza. Most were finally discovered and destroyed by both Israel AND Egypt.

• Are you telling me that these great tunnel-diggers are not able to construct one shelter for their people? What do we have to do to get it through the World’s heads that this is not an argument between equals? It is not ‘tit-for-tat’. There may be unpopular or even wrong political decisions made on the Israeli side. I mean…this IS war. But this is NOT Israel’s fault.

• And let’s repeat yet another oft-repeated fact: If the Palestinians laid down their arms today, there would be peace. If Israel laid down their arms, there would be a bloody massacre.

• Hamas is well-known to have said that it ‘values death as much as Israel values life’. THEY said that. And still World opinion can’t make up its mind or, when it does, goes blind.

Stephen